You may not know it, but every day you do something with physics. Why? Because that's the way the world works. Some of us are lucky enough to get paid to study physics. I'm one of the lucky ones. If you want to see a bit of what I do, look at my Professional Home Page. (By order of the Secretary of the Navy, there are no "frivolous" links on this page.)
As you'll note from that page, I work for the Complex Systems Theory Branch of the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington, D.C. Our work deals with theoretical studies and computer simulations of Condensed Matter (Solid State) Physics. If you really want to look, you can see a sample of our professional publications.
Since we study a solid materials, we spend a lot of time worrying about crystal structures. I had Ben Young, a summer student, create a page of Crystal Lattice Structures. Click here to look at the crystal structures of things like diamond, salt, and manganese. Of course, all of the crystals mentioned here are built out of one of the 14 Bravais Lattices. (Note: These sites are very heavy on the graphics.)
Rehan's Page has physics links, biographies, and much else. It's like this page, except the author knows what he's doing.
The American Institute of Physics (AIP) is an umbrella organization of Physics and Physics-related societies. If there is anything you want to know about the organization of physics in the US, it's probably here. The AIP site also hosts Physics News Preview, an in-depth look at topics in current physics.
For late-breaking news in Physics and Astronomy, see AIP's
Physics News Update.
The American Physical Society (APS) is the
leading organization of physicists in the world. On the APS server is
information about The Physical Review, and a
list of Physics Internet Resources.
Also on this server is Bob Park's What's New
column, an irreverant look at the interface between modern
physics and politics.
Modern physics is driven by preprints -- pre-publication versions
of scientific papers that traditionally were mailed to a few select
individuals. Now, many preprints are made available to everyone on
the Los Alamos Preprint Server.
Topics include all areas of physics.
Want to know about Relativity? Check out what Einstein had to say
in
Einstein on Relativity. For a modern introduction to black holes and
other weird objects, take a look at John Baez's
General Relativity Tutorial.
Need an equation? The Equations of
Physics page is a link to a 106 page summary of physics in areas
from simple mechanics to quantum field theory. You'll need to be able
to read postscript or compile LaTeX to see this one.
Need to convert from one set of units to another? Although furlongs
per fortnight is sadly lacking, this
conversion utility will handle most cases.
The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) maintains a database of Physical
Reference Data, which includes the values of the
Fundamental Physical Constants, the numbers which tell us how
quantum mechanics, relativity, electromagnetism, and particle physics
work. NIST also lets you take a Walk Through
Time and learn the history of calendars and clocks.
Nikola Telsa, whose work lead to our current AC electrical
technology, was, well, rather strange. He did publish an Autobiography,
which is now available on the web.
For a look at a better known physicist, see Albert Einstein
Online. This site includes biographies, pictures, and quotes. NOVA
Online's
Einstein Revealed includes a clickable biographical timeline.
Then there is Richard
Feynman. If you don't know who he is, you haven't been paying
attention.
Abdus
Salaam won a Nobel prize for his part in developing electroweak
unification (with Glashow and Weinberg), and was the founder of the International Centre for Theoretical
Physics (ICTP) in Trieste, Italy.
Biographies
Just the FAQs
A FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) file contains answers to questions
that repeatedly show up in Usenet newsgroups. The
sci.physics FAQ answers questions about relativity, time travel,
quantum mechanics and Noble prize winners. (Note: This is an anonymous
FTP link to a directory. Click on the icon by the part of the FAQ you
wish to view to see that section.) Update: There is
now an HTML
Version of the FAQ.
SciCentral calls itself the "Gateway to the Best Science Directories." They've got a lot of links anyway ("over 50,000"), and are reasonably well organized.
Want late breaking science news? Check out the press releases from EurekAlert!, or take a gander at inScight, a service of Academic Press and AAAS. You can also get news from ScienceNOW.
Got a question you can't get answered anywhere else? Ask An Expert! Subjects include Agriculture, the Amish, "Ask an Astronaut", Astronomy, Cryptography, Dinosaurs, Mathematics, Geology, Pharmacy, Physics, Plumbing, ... you get the idea. Be sure to read the instructions before you start.
San Diego State University's College of Sciences maintains a What's New in Science page. It's a bit weighted towards SDSU, but there is a lot of general information.
The Nobel Foundation's site includes a searchable database of all prize winners.
WhaleNet is dedicated to the interdisciplinary study of whales and the ocean. Here you can find descripitons of research voyages, and ask questions about whales and marine biology.
If you have a player from AudioNet you can listen to various science programming, including the American Institute of Physics' Science Report Radio. (This wasn't working the last time I tried it. [19 Oct 96])
Some of the links in the Science Reference Shelf are outdated, but many useful links live here.
Is there really life on Mars? How do they find planets around other solar systems? Is global warming something to worry about? Ask The Why Files. Or, if you're feeling very brave, ask the Mad Scientist Network to help you out.
Need homework help? Take a look at the Washington Post's Homework Maniac. (It's not just science and math, either.)
From a Condensed Matter Physicists point of view, the ideal periodic table would include the crystal structure, lattice constant, and melting point. Well, two out of three ain't bad. Maybe someday I'll do it right. In the meantime, here's a selection of periodic tables from the web which will tell you some of what you want to know about every atom known to man:
Take a tour of the nine planets courtesy of Bill Arnett. There are pictures of the planets and moons, movies, and lots of information. Some of Arnett's other offerings include pictures of web nebulae, Messier objects, NGC objects, and the world's largest telescopes.
Nate Wright, a professor of physics and astronomy at UCLA, has put together a Cosmology Tutorial, including a FAQ and debunking of "Cosmological Fads and Fallacies". The latter include The Big Bang Never Happened.
The University of Washington's Astronomy Curriculum page has not only what you'd expect, but links to other pages, including articles about dark matter, the local group of galaxies, and the physics of space flight.
Take some Glimpses of the Universe for a nice look at some of the better astronomical pictures on the net.
Scientific American has a nice article summarizing the ongoing discovery of extra-solar planets.
The Aerospace Navigator is a well organized link to many sites, including NASA, JPL, Galileo, foreign space programs, etc.
One of the best collections of links about the space program is right here in Cape Canaveral, at Bill's Space Center. He's got descriptions of all of the U.S. Manned Space Programs, including biographies of the astronauts.
Of course, there's always the official word, too. To start, we have the NASA Home Page, which includes a gallery of pictures, films, and sound bites. I'm particularly fond of the Apollo 11 page.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has run nearly all of the major unmanned US space missions. The current big missions, of course, are the Galileo spacecraft now orbiting Jupiter, and the just launched Mars Global Surveyor.
Clementine is a joint project of the Ballistic Missile Defense Organization (BMDO) and NASA. During the course of the Clementine mission, the satellite took thousands of pictures of the moon, available through the Clementine Lunar Image Browser at NRL. Just click on the image of the moon and get a detailed picture at resolutions up to 1 km/pixel.
And now, as you may have heard, Clementine may have found evidence of ice on the moon.
GeoCities' own Beyond Space page has information and pictures about the planets of our Solar System.
NASA is planning on sending many space probes to the Red Planet over the next decade.
CNN's Destination Mars site includes up to the minute news on Pathfinder, details of current and future Mars missions, including Global Surveyor, and reasons for going there.
Right now, of course, the biggest news is Pathfinder. This site as current pictures and news. With the proper equipment (I don't have it) you can see NASA Select TV's live feed.
JPL's Mars Exploration Program page has links to many Mars-related sites.
Over the millenia, mathematicians have discovered a variety of special numbers, from pi to the Golden Mean to Feigenbaum's constant. Now you can find not only the value, but the history, of nearly every number known to man.
An Inverse Symbol Calculator tells you what a number is made of. Type in "3.14159265" and see what you get back. You may be surprised. (If you want to calculate pi for yourself, take a look at The Miraculous Bailey-Borwein-Plouffe Pi Algorithm and then download this Fortran program.)
The recent solution of Fermat's Last Theorem notwithstanding, there are still a huge number of Unsolved Mathematics Problems, which you can read about here.
Pi through the ages gives you a web based history of man's favorite dessert. Excuse me? Oh. Never mind. Anyway, this site tells you a lot more about pi than you may want to know. For the definitive history of pi, plus gratuitous attacts on hippies, Aristotle, and the Roman Empire, go to Borders and get a copy of Petr Beckmann's A Brief History of Pi.
When something strange happens, it could be supernatural, psychokenetics, ESP, or UFOs. More likely, though, they're filming an episode of The X-Files. The sci.skeptics FAQ (the Frequently Questioned Answers) provides some likely scenarios for what really happened.
Magician James (The Amazing) Randi has dedicated most of his life to obtaining the answers to what really happened. He's also played a major part in exposing those who would like to help the mystical along just a little bit.
Penn & Teller spend some time debunking, too, but mostly they are just funny and weird.
Of course, maybe you can really bend a spoon with your bare mind. If so, Uri Geller on-line is just for you. Not for me, thanks.
Strange Worlds in the News is exactly what it says: links to current news which is off the beaten path. It's safe to say that I probably won't agree with a large portion of what is linked here.
I won't provide a detailed discription of these, as you probably know what's in there already. Note that most of these sites are heavy on the pictures and frames.
Hey, we've got to be able to laugh at ourselves, don't we?
The Annals of Improbable Research collects a lot of scientific papers that just can't be found anywhere else. Includes the Periodic Table of the Presidents, the Taxonomy of Barney, and the Ig Nobel Prize home page, for research which "cannot or should not be reproduced."
Science Made Stupid by Tom Weller is a send up of popular science articles and books. It's also available as a real book.
See
How to Write a Scientific Paper for the truth behind the exponential
growth of scientific journals.
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